Without saying a word, the “remote Microsoft Technician” minimized the PayPal window and took on a mission to destroy all my personal files:įigure10: Scammer crosses the line big time, deletes all my pictures, documents, music So instead I entered a wrong Credit Card number to buy some time.įigure9: (Un)fortunately, I can’t seem to type my Credit Card number rightĪfter a few other failed attempts I could see the guys were starting to lose patience and then, out of the blue, something very bad happened. ‘Sean the technician’ was more than eager to help me but the first thing he did was to open my browser to PayPal’s website so that I could pay the required lifetime fee of $299.įigure7: A happy scammer ready to go to workĪt that point, I decided to change my mind and no longer wanted to pay so much money for such a ridiculous scam. He told me to type “renew my warranty” to the technician.įigure6: Once the magic words have been spoken, it all goes downhill. I felt like asking if I should say “open sesame” but instead I refrained from a cheap joke at their expense and asked what the secret word was. I think this might be another technique used to cover themselves, as in I willingly asked them to help me. He told me a remote technician (which quite likely was also him) was ready to get working on my computer but he could not proceed until I actually instructed him to. The man on the phone also had a thick Indian accent and sounded quite professional. I believe this next person’s role is to process victims and to ensure payment goes through.
To give them access to my computer I had to download a program called TeamViewer which is totally legitimate software used by many companies and individuals to remote into somebody else’s machine.įigure5: TeamViewer, a free program to remote into computersĪt this point she asked me for the ID and password before telling me she was going to transfer me to her supervisor. The next part consisted of getting a remote person to fix these “issues” for me. Other than the blatant lies, she had not been too pushy and to her credit gave me the option to decline assistance. She kindly asked me if I wanted to remediate all these problems and I accepted it. When I gave her a ball park number, she retorted: “You are just guessing, I want you to count”.Īt this point I was ready to beg her to stop and she seemed to think it was enough convincing, that I was ripe enough to move on to the next step. She made me focus on the status of each Service and asked me once again to count how many “stopped” ones there were.
Yet another lie, as those Prefetch files are simply used by Windows to launch programs faster.īad things come in threes, as I was now instructed to open the “System Configuration Utility”, also known as msconfig. The interesting thing about this is that she called those files spyware and viruses so we went from my computer having some errors to being infected. While we could have stopped right there, she was intent on pursuing the diagnostic further. “You can see it in your own eyes”, she continued before asking me to count how many I could see. They then made me type a few more keys to open up Window’s Event Viewer:įigure1: Run dialog and command to open Event Viewerįigure2: Event Viewer showing typical errorsĬonveniently, the event viewer will always show some warning or error which the scammer can leverage to instill fear. I was instructed to press the “Windows” and “R” as in Robert keys together to get to the Windows Run dialog box.
They essentially make you open different applications which aren’t typically known by regular users. This scam is a well-oiled machine which starts off with the alleged Microsoft representative asking you to turn on your computer to perform some checks for errors. The caller’s number did not appear on my phone, a sign that they were using some Voice over IP (VoIP) or such technology that both completely hides their identity and costs them nothing for long distance calls. I immediately recognized what this was all about and decided to play the game to see how far this would go. It happens that I got ‘the call’ while minding my own business on a regular work day.
These telephony scams have been going on for many years and scammers keep robbing innocent people sadly because their success ratio is still worth their time and effort. Have you ever received a call from someone with a heavy Indian accent from Microsoft saying your computer had errors or viruses? The purpose of these calls is to get an easy $299 (or whatever amount they choose) by scaring you into thinking there’s something really wrong with your computer and that they can fix it for you.